Les Aspin, 56, Dies; Member of Congress And Defense Chief

Les Aspin, a Democratic representative from Wisconsin for 22 years and Secretary of Defense in the first 11 months of the Clinton Administration, died tonight at Georgetown University Medical Center.

He was 56 and suffered a stroke on Saturday.

Michael Tebo, a spokesman for the medical center, said Mr. Aspin died at 7:55 P.M. He said that Mr. Aspin was "lucid, awake and speaking" when he was admitted to the hospital at 9:30 A.M. on Saturday but that "despite intensive medical intervention over the next 34 hours his medical condition continued to deteriorate."

Mr. Aspin had a history of problems with his circulatory system. He was hospitalized in March 1993 after complaining of shortness of breath, and a pacemaker was inserted then to regulate his heart's rhythm.

Mr. Aspin was elected to Congress in 1970 in large part because of his opposition to the war in Vietnam, and in his early years in Congress he was an outspoken critic of the Pentagon.

But his views shifted after he became chairman of the House Armed Services Committee in 1985. He endorsed much of the military build-up under President Ronald Reagan and was a strong supporter of the war against Iraq under President George Bush.

As Secretary of Defense, Mr. Aspin was involved in some of the toughest international and domestic policy matters faced by the Clinton Administration in its first year. By the end of the year, he was viewed by the White House as indecisive and basically a disappointment. He would probably have been forced from office had he not resigned in December 1993.

He had been working this year as chairman of a Presidential commission charged with reviewing the operations of the nation's intelligence services, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency.

In a statement issued by the White House tonight, President Clinton said Mr. Aspin "rendered our nation extraordinary, selfless service."

"I speak for millions of Americans when mourning the death today of Les Aspin and join many others in saying that he was my friend," Mr. Clinton said. "Les Aspin accomplished greatly because he cared greatly."

John M. Deutch, the Director of Central Intelligence and a friend of Mr. Aspin's for 30 years, said he had lunch with him last Friday at the C.I.A.

"He seemed marvelous," said Mr. Deutch, who was the best man at Mr. Aspin's wedding. He said he and Mr. Aspin, who was instrumental in the selection of Mr. Deutch to head the C.I.A., "were scheming on how to reform the intelligence agency."

Defense Secretary William J. Perry, who was Mr. Aspin's deputy at the Pentagon before replacing him, called Mr. Aspin's death "a loss to the nation, a loss to the men and women of the U.S. military and a loss to me personally."

Leslie Aspin Jr. was born on July 21, 1938, in Milwaukee. His father, who died young of heart disease, was from Yorkshire, England, and immigrated to the United States by way of Canada.

Mr. Aspin earned an undergraduate degree from Yale University, a master's degree from Oxford University and a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the 1960's, he performed his military service as an economist at the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara.

After his military service, he worked briefly on the staff of Senator William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, and then returned to Wisconsin to enter politics and teach economics at Marquette University. In 1970, at the age of 32, he was elected to the House from a district in southeastern Wisconsin on a platform that stressed his opposition to the war in Vietnam and his advocacy of environmental regulations.

Robert W. Kastenmeier, a Democrat who served for 20 years with Mr. Aspin in the state's Congressional delegation, said that Mr. Aspin was an energetic politician who took a district "where it was hard to get elected as a Democrat, and he made it his own."

In Congress, Mr. Aspin was appointed to the Armed Services Committee and immediately began to attack the close relationship between senior lawmakers and the Pentagon.

Week after week, he issued news releases exposing what he believed to be wasteful Pentagon spending. He criticized a wide range of practices, including poison gas experiments, expensive uniforms for officers, cost overruns in shipbuilding and the care of officers' pets at Government expense. He was also at the forefront of various antiwar efforts in Congress.

At the time, he explained himself this way to a reporter: "You're a junior member of a committee, and you don't have the leverage of a subcommittee or committee chairman, so what do you do?"

In his first years in the House, he was almost constantly at war with F. Edward Hebert, the crusty, hawkish Louisiana Democrat who was then chairman of the Armed Services Committee. In 1975, in one of the first breaks with the practice of selecting chairmen strictly by seniority, Mr. Hebert was ousted by Democrats in the House and replaced with a more malleable chairman, Melvin Price of Illinois. Mr. Aspin was one of the leaders of the uprising.

In the years that followed, Mr. Aspin became less of a gadfly and more of a serious student of the military. By 1985, he was recognized as a leading Congressional authority on Pentagon policy. Then, he organized another coup, driving Mr. Price from his chairmanship and leapfrogging over more senior members to become chairman himself.

By this time, his politics had changed, to the dismay of the liberal wing in his party. He urged fellow Democrats to shed the party's dovish image.

On one of the most divisive policy matters of the time, he supported the development of the multi-warhead MX missile, which many liberals thought was too expensive and disruptive of the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.

On another controversy, he defended United States support of the contras, who were trying to overthrow the communist government of Nicaragua.

In 1987, an unusual coalition of liberal and conservative Democrats tried to strip Mr. Aspin of the chairmanship, but he narrowly survived the challenge.

Four years later, Mr. Aspin argued vigorously in favor of the Bush Administration's policies in the Persian Gulf. Four days before the House voted to authorize the use of military force against Iraq, he wrote a report that many of his colleagues saw as callous. One sentence read: "I believe prospects are high for a rapid victory with light to moderate American casualties, perhaps three to five thousand including 500 to 1,000 dead."

In 1992, along with Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mr. Aspin was a chief adviser on military policy to Bill Clinton's Presidential campaign. His selection as Secretary of Defense in December 1992 was generally praised, although some military experts pointed out that he had no experience managing a large organization like the Pentagon.

Mr. Aspin took control of the Pentagon at a time of tremendous upheaval in the post-cold-war world and in the Pentagon itself. Eager to take on the country's shifting international commitments, Mr. Aspin hired mostly academic experts as his main advisers.

He was never as close to President Clinton as Secretary of State Warren Christopher and the national security adviser, Anthony Lake. And he disagreed with the all-or-nothing approach to military engagement of Gen. Colin L. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Mr. Aspin held that the United States should be prepared to use troops selectively to buttress its diplomacy. In this vein, he suggested that the use of force in Bosnia might be appropriate.

In retrospect, his limited management ability can be seen to have hurt him as Defense Secretary. He tried, sometimes awkwardly, to mediate the prolonged fight between the White House and the military brass over whether to allow homosexuals to serve in the armed forces. He was also widely criticized for deciding not to reinforce American troops in Somalia in the weeks before 18 American soldiers died in a disastrous raid.

He sought to articulate a new vision of what the structure of the military should be. But in an Administration not known for its decisiveness, he often seemed unable to close a discussion and reach a decision.

At the end of his tenure, he was deep in battle with the Office of Management and Budget, which wanted to reduce military spending more than Mr. Aspin's plan to remake the Defense Department's long-range war-fighting strategy could stand. The only way Mr. Clinton could have sided with Mr. Aspin would have been to take money away from domestic programs to spend on the military, a step the President was unlikely to take.

Mr. Aspin was the first Clinton Cabinet member to leave, and Mr. Clinton took pains to portray the resignation as Mr. Aspin's decision. But few doubted at the time that he would have been dropped had he not resigned.

Mr. Aspin was a tall, stoop-shouldered, rumpled figure with thick glasses who began to go bald and gray at a young age. He was divorced in 1979, had no children and never remarried. He periodically entertained at his home in Georgetown, but basically his life was his work.

"Obviously, he was a person who took his job very, very seriously," said Representative Patricia Schroeder, Democrat of Colorado, who served with him on the Armed Services Committee. "He was totally wedded to his job 24 hours a day, to the point where he probably sacrificed some of his personal life."

Ms. Schroeder said she often felt that his best friend was his sheepdog, Junket, who often accompanied him to work, and she described that as "very sad."